Category: Large Family 
Price Range: £18,045 to £29,245
Fine handling, spacious, good quality cabin.
Longer gearing stunts performance, poor throttle response and inflexible noisy engine frustrates.
Econetic is the weakest link in the excellent Mondeo range.
With combined fuel consumption pegged at 53.3mpg and carbon dioxide emissions at a 139g/km the Mondeo, on paper, is comfortably the cheapest car in the range to run. In reality we suspect its long gearing will only ever be of benefit out on the open road. In urban conditions the poor set of gear ratios might even be a handicap, because of the numerous fuel-sapping gear changes.
In any case, the Econetic slips into VED band C, meaning £120 a year in road tax - the same band as the regular non-Econetic 1.8 TDCi. It also is worth bearing in mind that the regular version averages 50.4mpg - just 2.9mpg more than the Econetic.
This might not mean much, but to claw back the £250 premium over the 1.8TDCi, 42,000 miles have to be covered by the Econetic.
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